The Believers Walk

Romans 12:1-2

The tittle of the message this morning is The believers walk and we are going to talk about giving ourselves completely to God, and what it means to surrender our life to Him.

A believer’s level of commitment is directly related to his willingness to sacrifice for the cause of Christ. Listen to this amazing account:

Robert Chesebrough believed in his product. He’s the man who invented Vaseline. In the beginning it was only used to make forms on shafts of oil rigs.

But He believed in the healing properties of his product so much that he became his own guinea pig. He burned himself with acid and flame; he cut and scratched himself so deeply that he left scars on his body from the tests.

But, in the end, he proved his product worked. People only had to look at his wounds that were now healed, to see the value of Vaseline and to the extent he believed in it.

Let me ask you this, to what extent do you believe in God. Is your commitment to Christ real enough to sacrifice and suffer—for Him, for others? To do whatever God wants you to do and to go wherever He wants you to go?

That is the great subject of our passage this morning. The believers walk is one of sacrifice and commitment to God. It is being willing to give yourself completely to Him because of all He has done for you.

Romans 12:1–2 NASB95

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

In our passage this morning we learn; true Christian living must begin with personal devotion to God.

Warren Wiersbe said, “The Christian who fails in life is the one who has failed at the altar, by refusing to completely surrender to Christ.”

Paul says, that involves presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, renewing our mind through His Word, and surrendering our will to Him, through prayer and obedience.

Every Christian is either a conformer, living for the things of this world, or a transformer, living everyday to become more like Christ.

The believers walk is one of sacrifice and commitment, giving yourself completely to God because of all He has done for you.

The first thing I want you to see in this passage is;

The Dedication Vs 1

As believers we are to give our time, talents and energy to serving God.

Vs. 1 begins with, “Therefore I urge you brethren.”

Paul begins with the word “Therefore” and launches us into a new section of the book. “Therefore” is going to connect this back to everything he has been teaching.

He makes his appeal by the mercies of God. And that refers to everything he has said leading up to this point. What he has said is;

The world desperately needs to get right with God and the way for the world to get right with God is through God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has taught us about Justification; Believing in Christ and your faith being credit to you as righteousness.

He has taught about sanctification; being set apart to God and set free from sin.

And he has taught that believers are now God’s choice to carry the message of His Son to the whole world.

Therefore, in light of God’s mercies. In other words, all that God has done for you. We are to dedicate our lives to Him.

Notice the words “I urge you brethren.” Paul is literally begging us to devote ourselves to God.

Look at who he is talking to; “The brethren.” He is not talking to lost people of the world. He is talking directly to the church. And he is urging us to devote ourselves to Christ.

Notice Paul says, “Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.”

This is metaphorical language. Bodies here refers to the entirety of our Christian life. The imagery is of a high priest who would take a sacrificial animal and place it on the altar and give it to God. And the idea is that we are to take our own lives and present them to God.

Our mind, our heart, our hands, our feet, just every aspect of our bodies, top to bottom is to be taken out of our hands and placed into His hands for God to use however, He pleases.

And we do it in a specific way. He says, “as a living and holy sacrifice.” In the Old Testament they presented a dead sacrifice on the altar, it was slain, but here we are a living sacrifice. In other words we are to be alive unto God and be excited about living for Him.

The idea that we are a holy sacrifice means, that we are to be pure, undefiled, not contaminated by the world, but set apart for God.

Paul says this is; “Acceptable.” It is well pleasing to Him. God is not pleased with an unholy sacrifice. And God is not pleased with half sacrifice, sometimes committed and sometimes not. But He is pleased when we are fully alive and fully committed to serving Him.

Then notice Paul ends Vs. 1 and says, “Which is your spiritual service of worship.”

This is what is expected of us. The word spiritual actually means reasonable or rational. In other words, this is the most consistent and intelligent thing you can do.

Based on what God has done for you, it would be completely illogical not to devote your life back to God.

In fact the word spiritual here comes into the English language as logical or log rhythms.

It means the more you think about all that God has done for us; to save us and conform us into the image of His Son, the only logical response is for us to present our lives to Him and to live for Him.

It is an act of worship because we worship Him everyday. Not just on Sunday morning, but it is the rhythm of our life.

I am reminded of social media and how they want to capture our lives with algorithms. Algorithms determine what comes into our social media feeds, based on what we watch and spend our time looking at. For example, if I watch a videos of motorcycles repairs, I am flooded with motorcycle repair videos.

What would the algorithms of your life say about you? Would they say that your living for God or the world?

If we spend our time in God’s Word, in prayer and serving Him we develop a sacrificial lifestyle of living for God, but if we don’t we will be flooded by the rhythms of the world.

The next thing I want you to see in this passage is; The Separation Vs. 2A. “And do not be conformed to this world.”

We are to live separate from the worlds value system. We are to be separated from the world but not isolated from it. There is a difference. We are to have our boat in the water but not have any water in our boat.

As we live our Christian lives we are to be separated from the pressures of the world.

By “Do not be conformed,” Paul means don’t be squeezed into the mold of the world. Don’t be pressed into the worlds shape.

It is important to understand that when Paul uses the word “world,” he is not talking about people. We are to love the people of the world and reach the people of the world.

The world here is referring to the corruptible evil system of the world, that is controlled by Satan. He is talking about the worlds way of thinking, the worlds values, the worlds agenda.

The view of the world is that everything exists for the glory of man, and not for God. And Paul says don’t conform to that.

The world here refers to secular humanism and godless ideologies. And we are to resist the temptation of being pulled back to what God has saved us from.

It is a world system that we were once apart of. It is governed and controlled by Satan himself. He is the prince of this world and he dominates aspects of education, media, politics, and religion.

The Bible refers to it as the kingdom of darkness. But God has called us to be a Kingdom of Light.

Remember Paul is writing this to believers in Rome, and just imagine the pressures they were under to conform to the values of the Roman empire. Paul says don’t conform to it, be separated from it.

This reminds me of the Plato set Georgia has at home. She takes a ball of Plato and presses it into this mold and it comes out a dinosaur. And it doesn’t matter what the Plato looks like when it goes in, it all comes out looking like a dinosaur.

That is what Satan wants to do to us. He wants to mold us into his image but we were created in the image of God and Paul says, Don’t allow yourself to be molded.

This reminds me of kids today. They try so hard to be different, so they cover themselves in tattoos and they die their hair different colors, but the reality is they are the ultimate conformists. The harder they try to be different the more they are the same. If you want to be different follow the narrow path to life and live for the kingdom of God.

The apostle John teaches this same thing in 1 John 2:15

1 John 2:15 NASB95

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

We need to remember there is a world that God loves. He loves the people He has created. The people He sent His Son to die for. But there is a world system that God hates. It is a system that is in opposition to God.

A world that has different standards and different values than God. There is a world system that would destroy the family and every relationship we have. It is the system of the antichrist and it’s full of secular philosophies and ideologies.

John says, “Do not love the world nor the things of the world.” In other words, don’t live for the stuff that this world has to offer. Now, there is nothing wrong with having possessions. The problem is when our possessions have us.

A Christian is a citizen of heaven and we do not fit into the system of the world. We are a round peg in a square whole.

John says, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father in not in him.”

The love of the Father and the love of the world cannot co-exist in the same heart. You cannot love God and live for fortune, and fame. One will displace the other.

When you come to know Christ and you begin to love for God, the things of the world take a back seat. They are displaced. But if you allow the love of the world to move back in, it will take over your life. You will grieve the Spirit and you will begin to fall away.

The believer is not to conform, that means to fashion himself after the world.

You know how we dress different at work than we do at home or at church. We wear different clothes based on the environment we are in. Well a believer is to be clothed in the Lord Jesus Christ no matter what environment they are in.

The point is; don’t become to comfortable with the things around you that you forget who you belong to, and what is important in life.

I read a story this week from a man that really drove this point home.

I spent a great deal of time away from home. My job demanded a lot from me, so during the first few years of my children’s lives, Daddy was an absentee father. My wake-up call came the day my little daughter showed me a picture of home.

“What’s that, darling?” I asked. “That’s our house, Daddy,” she said. Pointing to three stick figures, I asked her, “And who are these people?” Without missing a beat she said, “This one is Mommy. This one is my brother. And this one is me.”

After an awkward moment of silence, I asked her “Honey, where is Daddy?” Her response broke my heart. “Daddy’s not here. He’s at work.”

What a horrible, sinking feeling. I failed to make it into her picture of our home. I would give anything to get my stick figure in her picture.

The point is don’t allow yourself to be molded by the world and miss out on what is truly important in life.

The final thing I want to show you in this passage is The Transformation, Vs. 2.

A believer is to be radically changed from the inside out into the likeness of Christ.

Paul began with the negative, ”do not be conformed.” Now he gives us the positive, “But be transformed.”

You can not have one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin. One is the break pedal and the other is the gas pedal.

The word transformed is Metamorphosis. it used of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. What Paul is saying is the very nature of a persons inner being, the personality, attitude, and perspective of life must be changed.

But how are we transformed? Paul says, “By the renewing of your mind.” The Christians mind must be renewed. The battle for the Christian life is a battle for the mind.

Our emotions can be up and down but it the mind that drives our life. Proverbs says, “So a man thinks so he is.”

The human mind is greatly effected by sin and selfishness, and it is centered on the things of the world. It desperately needs to be made new so that we can have God’s thoughts and a Christian world view. So that our convictions can be rooted and grounded in scripture.

We must be able to look at the world and assess it according to God’s point of view. Colossians 3:2 “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”

In other words, we are to be focused on the things of God and eternity. A transformed life necessitates a transformed mind.

This is what is commonly referred to as being born again or born from above. When Christ comes into your life He changes the way you think. He gives us His thoughts and His mind and it produces a higher standard of living.

As believers we are to live out this transformed life everyday, becoming renewed in our mind more and more.

We grow in Christ by allowing our minds to be focused on spiritual things. “We learn to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind.” Matt. 22:37.

And the reason why a believer is to be transformed is important. Notice the end of Vs. 2. “So that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The results of the transformed life is we come to know God’s will.

The word prove here means to test, to find and to follow God’s will. In other words, it will lead you into God’s chosen path for you in this world.

This certainly makes sense because if a persons mind is not focused on the things of God how will they ever discover what God’s will is for their life? How could they ever follow and obey Him?

The only conceivable way for a person to truly live for God is to have their mind on the things of God. Notice the three ways God’s will is described in this passage;

1. It’s “good” meaning it is beneficial, It’s rich. It is what you would choose for yourself if you were as wise as God. In other words, any other path that you would choose is bad, this is good.

2. It’s “acceptable” meaning well pleasing, satisfying, and welcoming.

3. It’s “perfect” meaning complete, whole, flawless and short of nothing.

The entirety of our Christian life is to be lived out on the path that God has chosen for us because it is what is best for our life. It is good, acceptable, and perfect.

Conclusion

Victory in the Christian life is gained by the renewing of our mind. This is not a one time event but it is a growth that takes place over the course of a lifetime.

We must learn to focus our minds on the things of God and not on the things of the world. We do that by dedicating ourselves to God. By developing a rhythm in life of service and devotion.

By engaging God in His Word and in His presence through fellowship and worship in the church. The believers walk is one of sacrifice and commitment to God. It is being willing to give yourself completely to Him because of all He has done for you.

Leadership Ministries Worldwide. (2003). Practical Illustrations: 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon (p. 106). Leadership Ministries Worldwide.

Wiersbe, W. W. (1992). Wiersbe’s expository outlines on the New Testament (p. 399). Victor Books.